0:16Skip to 0 minutes and 16 secondsHello. Welcome to the course. I'm Monica Poulter and with me is Marie-Therese Swabey and we'll be your guides throughout this course. Hello everyone and welcome from me too. So you're thinking of becoming an English Language Teacher. That's great. Are you thinking of doing it for a short time? Or are you thinking of doing it because you want to travel and work overseas? Or are you thinking of it as a career change? Or are you in it for the long term? Whatever your reasons, we hope that this course will help you to prepare so that you can make the experience of teaching English more profitable for you.

0:56Skip to 0 minutes and 56 secondsOn the course we're going to give you insights into teaching and learning so that when you get your first job, you'll be prepared to help learners to learn English and avoid disasters in the classroom. So we're going to look at the places you might go to and the kinds of learners you might teach. You're going to listen to learners and teachers talking about their experiences. And finally you'll meet some CELTA trainees on a CELTA training course preparing for their first teaching job.

Introduction to the course

Welcome to the start of our course ‘Exploring the world of English language teaching.’ This course will help you make decisions about the kind of English language teacher you want to be.

In this first week of the course, we’re going to begin our exploration by talking about the different teaching situations and different types of learners you could encounter. On Tuesday 8th November at 3.30pm (UK time), you’ll have the opportunity to take part in a live event with us here in Cambridge as well as with some of your mentors who’ll be joining us from various locations outside the UK. You’ll have the opportunity to ask them about teaching in their contexts.

In the following weeks, we’ll dive deeper into the world of English language teaching by looking at what the job involves, for example, motivating and managing learners, teaching vocabulary and using resources. There will be live question and answer sessions and a Facebook clinic where you can ask our educators and mentors questions you have about teaching English.

In the final week we’ll suggest some next steps you can take to set off on your own adventure of becoming a teacher of English. We’ll talk about training options and our teachers will give you advice on how to prepare for life as an English language teacher. We’ll hear from learners about their experience of teachers and learning and there will be more from our teachers, educators and mentors.

Outline of Week 1

This week we’ll start with some introductions and talk to some teachers about why they became English language teachers. Here are the key questions we’re going to answer:

Where can I teach English?

Who do I teach?

Why do learners want to learn English?

How easy is it to learn another language?

What do teachers do to help learners learn English?

What’s the difference between EFL, ESL and ESOL?

We’ll begin demystifying some of the terminology, the acronyms and the jargon surrounding English language teaching. We’ll also include a glossary each week which we’ll build on during the course and which includes terms like
CELTA (the qualification that Monica talked about in the video) and terms like TEFL and ELT.

Prove what you’ve learned with a certificate

The Certificate of Achievement is a great way to prove what you have learned on the course and as evidence of your Continuing Professional Development. This is a personalised certificate and transcript, detailing the syllabus and learning outcomes from the course. It comes as a printed certificate as well as a digital version which you can add to your LinkedIn profile. To qualify, you must have marked at least 90% of the steps in the course complete.

There is also the option to purchase a personalised Statement of Participation, to celebrate taking part. To be eligible for the Statement of Participation, you must mark at least 50% of the steps on the course as complete. This also comes in a printed and digital format and you can add it to your LinkedIn profile.